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The Real Problem With a Lone Ranger Movie? It's the Racism, Stupid

ICTMN Staff

7/8/13

The hysteria over Johnny Depp as Tonto is (probably) in its denoument: The Lone Ranger opened to terrible reviews and disappointing box office numbers, and American Indians who didn't like the idea of Depp as a Native icon were to some extent vindicated. There will be some pieces to pick up and some lessons learned, but a lot of questions have been answered.

Here's one that is still up for debate: Was the Lone Ranger story simply too much of a relic from less enlightened times? Was the whole shooting match, as Jason Bailey writes at Flavorwire, "too racist to reboot"?

Bailey notes that, despite Depp's lip service to a Tonto who would break with tradition, the character as played still "maintains the most culturally damaging element of the role, his definite article-free dialogue, with lines like, 'Do not touch rock. Rock cursed.'" Bailey describes the plotline of The Lone Ranger as a narrative that has been "twisted ... into pretzels" to try not to be racist -- and yet still is. The entire concept of the Lone Ranger and Tonto -- a team up that was historically unlikely, to put it mildly -- might just be unredeemable. Bailey brings up Shakespeare's play The Merchant of Venice, which was made into a major film as recently as 2004, and says "maybe we just don’t need to tell this story anymore, since it — though a classic, and an important piece of literature, etc. etc. — is deeply, unavoidably, problematically anti-Semitic."

In a long interview posted to the Moviefone Canada site, Jesse Wente of the Toronto International Film Festival grants that those involved with the film may very well have intended to empower Tonto, but ended up with a character that is less progressive than the Native sidekicks played by Chief Dan George in The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) and Gary Farmer in Dead Man (1995). And ultimately, Wente said, there is just a problem with the traditional Western. "Because of the nature of the Western, its ties to the idea of nationhood, particularly in the U.S.," he said. "These stories were, with Manifest Destiny, fundamental nation building [myths] for the U.S. If you think about the classic era of the Western, from the early '30s to the '50s, it came when the States was still a very young country and still needed to tell itself the story of its own origins, and this was the story it told. Unfortunately, it was told at the expense of the first inhabitants of this land because it altered the history, the truth of what happened. To me this film recalls a lot of those issues."

An article at Time.com suggested that "the issue isn’t so much the casting as it is the character." Adrienne Keene of Native Appropriations pointed out that Tonto is, unfortunately, one of just a few Native people -- real or fictional -- that non-Indians know of. The risk is that his quirks or character traits may be applied to an entire race: "Without an accurate pop-culture idea of a real-life Native American in moviegoers’ heads, Tonto is less of an individual character than he is a key piece of the popular image of a large and diverse population. The stereotype is particularly detrimental for its fantastical elements, [Keene] believes: when a real group of people seems as mystical as say, werewolves, in every pop-culture depiction of the group, it gets hard to pay any attention to the real people who are alive today and have real issues and achievements of their own."

It appears that, despite the filmmakers' intentions, The Lone Ranger did not reinvent Tonto or the Tonto-Ranger dynamic -- and perhaps it's because America has simply moved on. Is there any reinventing of Unce Remus from Song of the South, or Chop Chop from the old Blackhawk comic books? Arguably not. While a Native actor such as Adam Beach (often mentioned as a better fit for Tonto) might have been a more pleasing casting choice, in this case Depp's insistence on playing Tonto actually saved a Native actor the awkwardness of trying to sell viewers a story they were never going to buy.

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I watched the movie and enjoyed it as entertainment. Depp brought some 'Capt Jack' into the move, but it was a good movie and I will probably buy the DVD when it is released. Would I have liked it better if Adam Beach was Tonto.....unknown....I can't imagine that I would not enjoy an Adam Beach Tonto.
So, I for one, 'bought it',
Steve

I really like this coverage of the whole Tonto thing, (and this will probably be the last thing I really have to say about it), because it identifies what feels to me like the key concept that makes the whole thing problematic and more than "just a movie" or "just entertainment". And that is that stories and myths are important. They are not just how we fuel our imaginations, or how we keep ourselves from boredom. They are the visions from which we build nations, communities, and ultimately from which we build our world. People can be empowered and disenfranchised by stories, and we need to own that. It also means, that at some point, we need to question the usefulness of certain stories, and of certain kinds of stories. We need to be willing to identify when our stories really can hurt people, or even more subversively, when they influence our perception of the world so that we no longer notice or care that people are being hurt.

I think JD did a good job, the discussion about Natives startes now on a other, more public way and watched by the rest of the world. The fact that so many people are upset, is a succes indeed. He is an actor and this is just a film remember? And, I have heard that he is planning or going to buy Wounded Knee to give back to Native peaple, againno good because Indians are crying out that this land is theirs and that they should get ik back for free, well they do don't they? From him, JD. So what ! What's going wrong there in the USA?

I learned Spanish as my first language and as a child learning English, it puzzled me to hear the Lone Ranger's trusted friend referred to as "Tonto" which is Spanish for "Idiot". The actor's court battle to wear a mask in public was just plain bizarre.
The whole Lone Ranger concept needs to be buried and forgotten. It is a part of Hollywood that served to stereotype inferior types of people who were even on the good side of the law....something unacceptable in today's society.
The Lone Ranger made plenty of money in the Baby Boomer era, but also perpetuated a rash of social problems and ignorance about meso-american cultures. Today, we still can't get North Americans to accept that Creek Natives were actually Mayans.

It's more to the point that our government is racist to the point of continuing its genocidal tendencies by not providing aid to people within our country who sorely need help with basics like electricity and plumbing. Providing aid to other countries first. Pointing fingers at Johnny Depp or any film is part of a system that's askew. Our government is part of what's off center, and we can do better.

The Tonto I grew up with I saw as a friend and partner to the Lone Ranger. I remember from the shows Tonto was needed to rescue or backup the Lone Ranger. That he was a Native character played by a Native during the 50's and 60's is rather subversive for the times. His English was sad. I guess having him speak regular English was one step to many.
The Lone Ranger has been updated in comic books and if this current version had borrowed from them we might not have had this conversation. Johnny Depp did what he was hired to do, make a crazy quirky character. Just like Dark Shadows he did it with a pre-existing character that wasn't crazy and quirky. Therefore the basic problem with the movie.
I agree there were some great Buster Keaton homages in the movie but why was Tonto a Buster Keaton homage?